Maybe it's part of the side-wide rewrite TET mentioned.

Those websites posted in the OP remind me of the software running in the Metro portion of Win8 - very much dumbed-down, with an enormous reduction in the options that we're used to seeing with PC software. I'm worried that this signals a trend where we start seeing less and less info on websites in the name of aesthetics.

My web designer just did a similar thing to his site... and got some minor industry commendation for it. Fortunately, I was very clear on my own site requirements so there's none of that stuff. And without me asking, he made it run nicely on phoblets.

Well, it is. A lot of designers have no idea about how to keep functionality in mind, they just focus on the aesthetics.

This seems to be doubly true for web designers, for some reason.

I still stand by this page when it comes to website design, less is more (Naughty language warning).

This should be mandatory reading for... everyone, really, but especially web designers.

I have friends that do web development and web design for a living, and oh, you'd be surprised. If it is not them doing all "fancy" stuff, its the people above them in the organisations' food chain, and those can be markekting, management, whatever department that doesn't know a thing about UX.

EDIT: MediaFire's design is so lovely. The bad thing about it is that it doesn't do partial scrolling, but just transitions to another section in the HTML file.

With all the interactivity added to sites these days, what's the point of a site looking pretty if it's hard to navigate and use it? I'm not going to be staring at the front page for the rest of my life admiring its looks, am I now?

Ah thanks, you give me hope ;-P

Nice rant. I would suggest your next rant's target: Windows 8. Oooooh, shiny tilessssss'n touch!

Nah, I'm skipping Windows 8 altogether so I don't have to.

I'm aware of that but that design didn't come out of nowhere. Whoever came up with it and at least some people using it now must have had touch devices in mind.

But still, I know what you mean. Usually web designers don't know what they are doing and when they actually are good they are being told to make garbage. That's at least my observation among the people I know.

Me too, me too :-P

Actually, tiles are not bad. Because they are, you know, functional. Or at least they will be in 9 when, hopefully, there's more software that supports tiles. Windows had clickable pictures for decades, why not upgrade them to look less like someone ate a stale vinaigrette? Apps are evil, but apps are system architecture and DRM, not interface design.

Now the web slides are insultingly idiotic. They might be fine for a phone or a tablet (my fingers don't move well so even a 10.1 tablet is kinda smallish), but holy shit I have two HD widescreens side by side and don't hide my user agent for a reason. I'm on a PC, give me a proper PC interface. Really, this reminds me of the bevel and gradient boom of the mid-90s. It's not functional, it's not pretty, and it's not clean. Like myspace, it feeds and encourages the most idiotic notions. Did you hate auto-playing audio? Now we have auto-playing video. Effin' gratz.

QFT.